Sunday, July 13: Westchester’s Long Island Sound beaches are open today.
Saturday, July 12: Long Island Sound beaches in Westchester County are open today. It’s a beautiful summer day, so enjoy the water!
We hope our Sound Swim Alerts will help you plan your weekend, but we also hope they bring attention to the problem of chronic pollution at local beaches.
We will be holding a community forum on Long Island Sound water quality issues at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 16, at the Mamaroneck Town Center. Everyone is invited so please stop by. Bring your questions and participate in the discussion. You may have heard about the sewage spill at Marshlands Conservancy in Rye that one of our volunteers discovered.
We issue Sound Swim Alerts for Westchester every weekend and holiday throughout the summer, and, if the beaches are closed because of pollution, on weekdays as well. We will post a notice here on Green Cities Blue Waters telling you if the beaches are open, and we’ll also post it on our Facebook page and on Twitter (@savethesound).
Unfortunately, the beaches are not always open. Stormwater contaminated by sewage from old, deteriorating sewers throughout the county prompts the Westchester County Health Department to preemptively closes 10 Long Island Sound beaches (and several others inland and on the Hudson River) each time it rains half an inch or more within 24 hours.
Those 10 are the public beaches at Harbor Island Park in Mamaroneck and Hudson Park in New Rochelle, as well as private beaches at Beach Point Club, Mamaroneck Beach and Yacht Club, Shore Acres and Orienta Club in Mamaroneck; Echo Bay Club, Davenport Club, and Greentree Club in New Rochelle; and Coveleigh Club in Rye. There’s more information here about why some beaches are shut down and others aren’t.